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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: janitor@hbd.org


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Contents:
  RE: Cleaning Solutions ("Parker Dutro")
  Possibly stupid sparge question (Audie Kennedy)
  Yeast ("David Root")
  re: cleaners and sanitizers ("Doug Moyer")
  Re: PVC pipe as pressure vessel ("Mike")
  Plato and S.G. ("A. J. delange")
  re: how long will bottles stay sanitized? ("Dr. Pivo")
  Plato vs SG ("Dr. Pivo")
  Steve Is Right Again ("Phil Yates")
  RIMS - Optimum Flow Rate ("David Mackaway")
  premashing cereal grains (Alan McKay)
  Fermenting under pressure (David Passaretti)
  Dry Ice? ("Kevin Boyer")
  Refractometer Light Sources ("Angie and Reif Hammond")
  "..a bit of advice." **WARNING:OFF TOPIC EMAIL** ("Country Brewer- Penrith")


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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 00:55:15 -0700
From: "Parker Dutro" <ezekiel128 at edwardwadsworth.com>
Subject: RE: Cleaning Solutions

I have used B-Brite, Star San, Straight-A, and Chlorine.  Of all I
prefer the Straight A.  It was cheaper than the other oxy-cleaners,
cleaned better, and rinsed clean off.  I HAVE noticed a residue with the
B-Brite, and I am working diligently to keep my carboy and bottles
residue-free.  I invested in a Jet Bottle Washer, (which I needed to do
anyway) and am happy with it.  However, as soon as the B-Brite is used
up, I will make a point to get some Straight A, (may try PBW if it's as
effective and inexpensive as is being said) I keep my stuff clean and
de-goobered while storing it, and I use Iodophor before using it.  I
just wanted to back up Rick the chemist.

Parker Dutro,
Portland, Oregon




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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 04:33:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Audie Kennedy <audie_24293 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Possibly stupid sparge question

I have a question about sparging.  I use a large
rectangular cooler for mashing.  I have sparged in the
"normal" way, and really don't understand the finer
points, I suppose.  I had to take "Chemistry for
non-science majors" (better known as bonehead
chemistry) 3 times in college...
Anyway, what would happen if I added my normal amount
of sparge water, STIRRED the grain heavily, and let it
sit for another hour, then opened my spigot and
drained off that liquid?  Or if I added the water and
didn't stir?  What would be the effect on efficiency
on soaking the grain?  I see sparging as "rinsing" the
remaining fermentables.  Is this wrong?
Audie Kennedy
Wise, Va.



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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 08:46:52 -0400
From: "David Root" <droot2 at rochester.rr.com>
Subject: Yeast

I am preparing to brew.  I usually brew in a converted 1/2 keg
Then I open ferment in another one with a gallon starter of Wyeast 1007 
This forms a nice pancake of yeast on the top if the beer.  
After 6 days I  rack into 2 cornies by drawing the beer from the bottom 
while the yeast stays floating on top.  This works well for me.
The beer is clear  and ready for force carbonating.

Are there any other yeasts that would 
provide me with a pancake of yeast on top of the beer
to work with my system?  I haven't had an infection in a 
long time.

Thanks
David Root
West By Golly Shelby New York



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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 09:37:09 -0400
From: "Doug Moyer" <shyzaboy at yahoo.com>
Subject: re: cleaners and sanitizers

Marc Sedam <marc_sedam at unc.edu> sez:

"Once I found that Beer, Beer, and More Beer sells this stuff
in bulk, I was golden.  A four pound jar of PBW is $20..."

Just a note: since Northern Brewer (http://www.northernbrewer.com) is kind
enough to sponsor the HBD, I would like to suggest that you support them.
They sell PBW for:

1 lb    $6.95
4 lb    $19.95
8 lb    $30.95

No affiliation. I am not even a satisfied customer (yet).


Brew on!

Doug Moyer
Salem, VA

Star City Brewers Guild: http://hbd.org/starcity

"There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'"
     ~ Dave Barry

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
 with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
     ~ Galileo Galilei




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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 09:38:11 -0400
From: "Mike" <brewski at inet99.net>
Subject: Re: PVC pipe as pressure vessel 

There seems to be a lot of hot air, duck, going around about the wisdom of
using schedule 40 PVC to pipe or hold compressed CO2. I to was leary of
doing that knowing as someone else pointed out, when you have a catastrophic
failure of a water pipe is one thing. Granted its messy but when a vessel
with a hundred or so pounds in it, you have an explosion.

Anyway, I done a Google search for "schedule 40 PVC" and got this sight
http://www.otool.com/untitled12.htm
Here 1/2" schedule 40 PVC's MAX PSI is 600  at  73F. "WO"
Even 12" can take 130 PSI.

Mike





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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 13:49:35 +0000
From: "A. J. delange" <ajdel at mindspring.com>
Subject: Plato and S.G.

Sorry I haven't been able to participate in this thread (press of other 
business) previously. Tried to send Pete my notes on S.G. but they 
bounced. If you'll give me a good address I'll try again.

WRT the subject discussion - Plato/Brix is the weight of extract in 100 
grams of solution. Specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of the 
solution (at a specified temperature) to the weight of an equal volume 
of water (at a specified temperature which is usually, but not always, 
the same temperature as specified by the wort). The job of the Normal 
Eichungs Komission (chaired by Dr. Plato) was to determine the specific 
gravity of solutions of known strength to greater accuracy than those 
in  use at the time and the result are tables accurate to 6 places to 
the right of the decimal point. The modern ASBC tables are based on 
interpolation into the Plato tables with correction to (20C/20C).

It's a fairly simple matter to prepare a sucrose solution of known (if 
not exactly desired) strength. Tare a container and stir bar (best if 
the container  can be closed e.g. a volumetric flask with stopper). Add 
pure sucrose and note weight. Add water, stopper, and note weight. Stir. 
The strength of the solution is the ratio of the weight of the sugar to 
the weight of the solution. You can adjust the strength down by adding 
more water and up by evaporation. Once you have the strength you want 
the trick is to measure the density of the solution before evaporation 
can get you. Here's where the stopper and long neck of a volumetric 
flask come in handy. Modern density measuring instrumentation sucks a 
small (couple mL) sample into an oscillating U-tube. The sample tube can 
be inserted right down the neck of the volumetric flask. Even so, the 
last measurement of a series from a flask prepared this way will read 
higher than the first because even the slightest amount of evaporation 
will be detected in measurements made to this level of  accuracy.

As has been pointed out, you can only measure density. Density is mass 
per unit volume while specific gravity is a ratio of weights and comes 
in two flavors depending upon whether the weights in air or in vacuuo 
(i.e. whether the weight of the volume of air displaced by the sample is 
accounted for or not). Thus in order to calculate specific gravity from 
density the weights of water and air at the temperatures of interest 
must be known. There are published tables for these. The reason for 
mentioning all this is that if you look in the Appendices of the MOAs 
you will see the rather hairy formula used by ASBC to convert the Plato 
tables to the ASBC tables. These factors are in it. Modern density 
meters have this info stored internally and so read in whatever units 
you want.

WRT the sucrose/wort fiction: some experiments carried out as described 
above show that the common sugars (sucrose, maltose, fructose, glucose 
and even dextrine) produce solutions whose specific gravities are very 
close to one another for a given strength. There are, of course, other 
things in wort (proteins, phenols, hop acids and oils and minerals) but 
with the exception of perhaps protein and the minerals in Burton water 
these are in relatively small proportion compared to sugars. I think the 
reason sucrose was used is that it is less hygroscopic than the others.

Finally, there is no contest between Plato and Specific gravity - it 
isn't a Mac/PC thing. A brewer must consider both. Plato tells him how 
many grams of extract are contained in 100 grams of his wort and 
specific gravity tells him the volume of 100 grams of wort. From this 
data he can calculate the grams (or pounds) of extract per liter (or 
gallon) of wort and thus determine the efficency of his brewhouse, 
compute the boiloff or dilution water required to change the strength of 
the wort going to the fermenter and so on. Needless to say most of this 
is moot in the case of the hydrometer that came with the extract brewing 
kit you got for Christmas.

A.J.



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Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 18:43:42 +0200
From: "Dr. Pivo" <dp at pivo.w.se>
Subject: re: how long will bottles stay sanitized?

Alan McKay asks if his sanitised bottles can wait a few days, and I
haven't seen a reply yet.

If there is one guy who has patiently answered "thousands" of questions,
often the same ones, it is Alan.... so I'll give it a stab.

My guess is that they are OK.

On the same line, I will report how I've been "stung" by this thinking
(much of my brewing knowledge is derived from "trial and error"  with
very much "error").

I sanitise most often with a hydrogen peroxide solution which I then
flush out with the item inverted using regular ol' well water. Well
under the standard hygiene reccomendations here, but I have no infection
problems even with long storage of beer .... so why worry.

At one point; I did this to a number of carboys, capped them before
racking, and then racked and found I'd one more cleaned carboy than
needed for the volume.

Some number of weeks later (can't recall exactly, but a month would be a
good guess) I was going to rack again and thought: "Hey, there's one
that's already clean... that's one less I need to do (the "cleaning"
side of brewing becomes like a festering carbuncle on one's backside
with time).  I racked to that carboy along side of some freshly cleaned
ones, and low and behold, beer derived from that carboy eventually
developed a sour tinge that worsened with time that I'm guessing
acetobacter to be the author of.

My reasoning was thus:   When we sanitise, we are always leaving SOME
bacteria, and the job is really to minimise them to a point that it will
not have flavour influences.  A rollicking yeast party seems to
discourage these minute ammounts from ever getting a foothold (though I
will admit, I've never run across what I consider an adequate
explanation for exactly "why"..... alcohol, and lowering pH's do not
seem to be completly adequate for the conservation powers that seem to
appear in reality... I have actually contemplated alcohol and CO2
doctoring some sterile wort, and comparing it to an equivalent fermented
beer, trying to "implant" them with pathogens, culture them and see who
plates out bigger..... even have recently been looking at nitric oxide
emmission (in humans) and wondering if I shouldn't cap a ferment and see
if it is higher than ambient... but I do get these silly ideas, and
there are limits to  how much extra work even I will make for myself
just to still my curiosity.... I could just be getting old).

Even as there are always SOME bacteria left, there is likewise SOME
nutrient for them left even after cleaning, and left undisturbed long
enough those missplaced residents might well  multiply.

So while I would think nothing of just squirting out a newly emptied keg
with my well water (when I knew it's recent contents were healthy)
before filling with the next batch, I do not trust that sanitised items
that have been left closed and wet will stay sanitised indefinately and
prefer to get them filled fairly soon.

It is tempting to blame my well water, and that "well" be true, but I
have cultured it on a few media with "no growth".... but that is of
course a relative thing, and finding the right medium "something" would
surely turn up..... just not of a type or concentration that it has ever
bothered my beer except the above example.

Summa summarum? I think a week with a sulphite solution are completely
within the limits of OK, but you'll be the first to know if it isn't.

Dr. Pivo



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Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 19:02:35 +0200
From: "Dr. Pivo" <dp at pivo.w.se>
Subject: Plato vs SG

Phil Yates writes:


>  Given that Plato only relates to sugar as a % weight of
> the medium in question, I can't see any reason to adopt it for my own
> brewing purposes.
>

Frankly, I've never seen much wrong with a good Platonic
relationship.... I wouldn't of course have a disproportionate number of
them.... We've all heard what happened to the Boston priests.

If they get caught doing that 8 or 9 more times I think one should
consider defrocking them.

As related to brewing, one value of using Plato is to think in
equivalent amounts. F'rinstance if wanting to prime with wort instead of
a "dry" sugar of some sort, it's a handy sort of way of keeping in mind
what's what.

Otherwise, I'd say Phil's on the right track: "whatever makes you a
happy brewer will probably make you brew more, and that's what makes you
a better brewer."

Dr. Pivo



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Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 08:41:56 +1000
From: "Phil Yates" <phil.yates at acenet.com.au>
Subject: Steve Is Right Again

One needs look no further than Noonan's NBLB page 312 to see a definition of
Plato and confirm it is a weight/weight density measurement.

Where I do find the use of Plato handy is in making up yeast starters. For
example, if I want a two litre starter at 1040 SG, using Plato I know I need
to add 10% malt extract to my two litres of water to achieve this. Again it
is approximate but close enough for me.

I just wish Steve would stop getting everything right, soon we'll be running
out of things to argue about.

Then where will the HBD be?!!

Cheers
Phil



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Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 10:01:37 +1000
From: "David Mackaway" <mackawad at ozemail.com.au>
Subject: RIMS - Optimum Flow Rate

A question for the collective out there.  What are peoples views on what the
best flow rate is for your wort through a RIMS system ?

Dave




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Date: Sun,  7 Jul 2002 11:15:27 -0400
From: Alan McKay <amckay at neap.net>
Subject: premashing cereal grains

Marc Sedam writes an extremely detailed account of what happens
in the mash with cereal grains.  However detailed the account, 
I have to disagree with claim that pre-mashing is a requirement :

> This is more important in commercial scale brewing where the 
> cereal mash has to be pumped

Several years ago when I asked a brewmaster at Molson about this,
he said the only reason he could think of for pre-mashing was
the above, and he noted that I would understand the importance
if I'd ever had to shovel several tonnes of retrograded corn
or rice out of a vessel.  On a homebrew level even if the cereal
does retrograde, it will be far from unmanagable even in
a 15 gallon batch size.

> Had the starches not been broken
> down, you would get tiny clumps of unfermentable corn starch
> in the mash.  

Maybe if you didn't stir the mash properly or something.  I have
never premashed my starches and have used a great deal of rice,
various types of corn including starch, grits and flakes, and
even potato.  I have never once had an unmanagable, retrograded
mash, never had clumps of unfermentable starch, and never had
starch haze problems in the fermenting beer.

Some day maybe I'll try this pre-mash thing just for the sake
of comparison, but so far I haven't really found a reason to
try other than sheer curiousity.  Of course the question presents
itself "why wouldn't you?", given that the procedure is identical
either way.  If I were doing this for the first time I probably
would do it this way.  But I'm a man of habit.

cheers,
 -Alan


- -- 
http://www.bodensatz.com/
The Beer Site (tm)


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Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 09:36:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Passaretti <dpassaretti at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fermenting under pressure

Does anyone know if there are any adverse/positive
effects of fermenting under CO2 pressure? Is there any
difference for ale or lager yeast.  Is there a safe
pressure range for yeast (eg 10, 20, 30psi)?
Thanks for any information
David Passaretti
Cincinnati, OH




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Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 13:42:11 -0500
From: "Kevin Boyer" <kboyer at houston.rr.com>
Subject: Dry Ice?

Has anyone ever tried adding blocks of dry ice to wort to cool it quickly?

Would the CO2 gas off into the wort and cause a problem during fermentation?

Is potential infection an issue even with the dry ice being so cold?

Kevin Boyer
Houston, TX



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Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2002 20:07:28 -0400
From: "Angie and Reif Hammond" <arhammond at attbi.com>
Subject: Refractometer Light Sources

I have found that I get the sharpest, most distinct line when I read my
refractometer in sunlight.  Next best is a full spectrum (sunlight)
florescent.  Incandescent lights give a very fuzzy line, regular
fluorescents can give a fuzzy line also. 

Reif Hammond
Durham, NH




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Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 12:22:44 +1000
From: "Country Brewer- Penrith" <youre_my_valentine at bigpond.com>
Subject: "..a bit of advice." **WARNING:OFF TOPIC EMAIL**


Karl: "Country Brewer Penrith, Karl Speaking"

Caller: Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice. Can you help me?"

Karl: Sure, How can I help you?

Caller: Well, I had an accident a couple of years ago, back in umm august
1998. I was at work and I hurt my back. I didnt do anything at the time,
didnt think about it as the boss at the time said that if I was going to sue
him I could hand my notice in straight away...

Karl: umm

 ... so I didnt do anything until 2001. My Back started hurting and I havent
had a good nights sleep, well I dont think ive had a good nights sleep since
the accident. Ive been meaning to go to a solicitor since then but havent
been able to get the time.......

Karl:ummm

Caller:Can you tell me where I stand?

Karl: Ummm...Mate.... this is a homebrew shop

Caller: Pardon?

Karl: this is a homebrew shop...

Caller: what does that mean?

Karl: I sell homebrew concentrates... umm ,stuff to make beer, wine and
spirits...umm, I think you may have the wrong number.....

Caller: So You cant help me?

Karl: No, Unfortunately I cant, Sorry.

Caller: Thats ok, Thanks anyway....Bye

Karl: Thanks for calling, Bye...

[Caller hangs up]

Karl Valentine, Manager.
The Country Brewer - Penrith
560 High St,
Penrith, NSW, 2750.
(02) 4731 5444
rainman at countrybrewer.com.au
www.countrybrewer.com

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain
physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication. --Friedrich
Nietzsche, famous German troublemaker (1844-1900)




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